After he had defeated the Egyptians in battle and accepted their surrender, Harun-in’-Rashid decided to teach his new subjects a lesson. “Egypt’s rulers called themselves gods,” he said, “and so they were arrogant enough to challenge me. Now they will be ruled by the lowest of my slaves,” and he made Khosaib, a stupid negro, Egypt’s new governor. Khosaib, however, was so stupid that when a group of farmers came to him for help because the cotton they’d planted on the banks of the Nile had been destroyed by heavy rains, he replied, “You should have planted wool instead.”

A pious man heard what Khosaib said and recited these lines:

If knowledge were the measure of all wealth,
the ignorant would live in poverty.
Yet here is a man who should be starving,
and his prosperity leaves the wise speechless-
which proves that getting rich is not a skill,
and who knows why God granted him such luck?
It happens: Sages must stand aside like beggars
for stupid men who are given royal robes.
If an alchemist dies bitter in his failure,
know that somewhere a fool found gold in the trash.

The Strangers Project is a collection of over 20,000 anonymous handwritten “journal entries” shared spontaneously by passing strangers. I ask people to write about anything they want—as long as it’s true. [Thanks, Reader G!]

Today in 1784, Russian fur trader Grigory Shelikhov founds Three Saints Bay on Kodiak Island, the first permanent Russian settlement in Alaska. From this base, the Russians would explore the Alaskan mainland and assert their claim over the territory they would later sell to the United States for $7.2 million dollars…or two cents per acre.

chrisom /KRI-zəm/. noun. A child’s baptismal robe (originally a face cloth) or, upon death before 30 days old, a burial shroud. Derived from pronunciation of chrism, a sacramental balm or oil. From Greek khriein (to anoint). See also chrisomes (children who die in their first month of life).[Read more…]